Human Ashes and £15,000 Among TfL's Weirdest Pieces of Lost Property

A staggering haul of 300,000 lost items was logged by bosses at Transport for London last year, with kindly travellers and staff handing in everything from face masks and Spider-Man costumes to several hundred forgotten umbrellas.

Photos taken by a visiting Press Association staffer reveal more weird left luggage, including face masks, false limbs, and enough mobile phones to keep Carphone Warehouse ticking over for a month.

Last year just 22 per cent of lost items handed in to TfL's Baker Street lost property office were claimed by their owners, presumably because most Londoners are cynical enough to assume whatever they just left on the bus or train has been insta-pocketed by some untrustworthy chancer.

Lost property office manager Paul Cowan said of the haul: "We've had urns of ashes come through, bundles of notes, we've got enough musical instruments, guitars and trumpets and flutes and clarinets, even drum kits to start our own band."

Trivial items like books and clothes are kept for three months then donated to charity or recycled, but more worthy pieces -- like the lost urn of ashes -- are kept for longer. Those ashes were in the office for seven years, in fact, before someone came to get them. [Sky News]